Issue #23

Knowing that I have to keep learning to keep earning means that I’m constantly challenging myself to think bigger. Design should be bold after all. Where an opportunity comes up to meet customer needs, I try and ask “what could we do instead?” What could make the business better and in turn, attract more time from people, either through content or shopping.

Sometimes new features aren’t needed. Instead, we should iterate upon existing day-to-day interactions. Or even, continuing on the bold theme, delete features because they aren’t meeting their success criteria. Being lean and clean reduces the amount of work design teams need to maintain, freeing them up to be bold.

Thank you for supporting this issue. Issues are averaging 40-50% open rate and 10-20% click rate. You’re encouraging me to keep iterating and provide more value each week!

While most people agree that usability testing can be incredibly helpful for a product, it can often feel out-of-reach inside businesses. Brad Dalrymple prescribes a 5-step approach to conduct your first sessions.

A service helps a user do something. Service design therefore is about working with users and delivering services - far away from brochure websites and marketing activity. I’m fascinated by design helping people do what they need to do, and linking to digital transformation, great design can move us forward.

“On alternating Tuesdays, I get to be a young second-generation immigrant woman named Selene with great phone presence and multilingual skills.” Selene and others make up Sasha Akhavi’s team pantheon of user personae. They are, in essence, imaginary friends whom they amalgamate understandings of those actual human beings who will create, administer, and consume data via their product. But, as he explains, there is a richness available in them that may go generally untapped.

At some point during the summer of 2015, mobile devices overtook desktop computers as the preferred method of conducting a Google search. With that in mind, having a website that doesn’t work well on a mobile device is probably losing you custom. Also: Check your Google Analytics - you might find some interesting info.

The top concerns of businesses looking for new premises, below size and cost, were concerns around commuting. Darren Bilsborough explains that he found “a 6% productivity gain when people participated in active travel modes (defined as thirty minutes of walking or cycling per day).”

I’ve been using Balsamiq for creating wireframes for a while, but only recently have started using myBalsamiq - the online version. I love how it works pretty much the same as its desktop cousin, but with group commenting and the latest version always on view, it becomes a key component to design team communication.

“Caring about your employees doesn’t just mean providing them with health benefits or 401(k) plans […] I’m passionate about knowing each and every one of them as individuals.” There’s no stopping Gary Vaynerchuk. Here he shares how, with incredible growth and ambition, he’s still able to care about every single person within his organisation. Great to follow!